Kailash Jajoo, chief executive officer at All Time Offset Printers, started his first business with a long-distance telephone STD PCO in 1996. As it was a day and night occupation, ‘running all the time’ when the idea of starting a screen and offset printing business came to him – he named it All Time Offset Printers. Over the past two decades, All Time Offset Printers (ATOP) has become a producer of diaries, notebooks, magazines, brochures, children’s activity books, school textbooks, calendars, textured rigid magnetic boxes, and paper boxes and bags.
As with many successful printers in the Delhi NCR, All Time Offset Printers has grown and acquired machines with improved and automated technologies and built up a team of skilled and trained resources. In 2000, it bought a single color Dominant offset press, and in 2005, installed its first multicolor offset press, a used 4-color Komori sheetfed. In 2010, it added an SM 74 Heidelberg, and when Jajoo went to drupa in 2012, he realized that he should go for a brand new machine. Although motivated, he did not have enough space in his plant and had to acquire a plot of land in Noida and build a new factory. He was able to install a brand new 5-color RMGT in the newly built premises in 2015, which was soon complemented by a Kodak thermal CtP device.
In 2018, the company purchased a rebuilt SM 102 Heidelberg multicolor press from Japan to produce books for a textbook publishing house. As the printing proceeded smoothly and the books were being readied for delivery in time for the beginning of the new school year in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic arrived, and soon after in March the total lockdown was declared. The lockdown constraints and the total closure of schools, colleges, retailing, bookshops, and most industries including hospitality and travel affected the entire commercial and book printing industry.
Rigid-box making to lead to a separate packaging plant
Before the pandemic, ATOP was involved in supplying rigid boxes to a few customers. In the 2020 pandemic year, the company started its rigid box-making business. It already had ancillary converting and decorating equipment for die-cutting, lamination, foiling, and embossing which is used for box making as well. As the lockdowns were lifted after several months, it increased its rigid box making and, in December 2020, installed a Chinese-made semi-automatic rigid box-making machine with a grooving machine, corner tapping, and bubble press. All Time Offset produces rigid luxury boxes for gifting products, cosmetics, and corporate gifting.
Commenting on the pandemic, Jajoo says, “During the pandemic, many commercial publishers and printers were losing money, and we suffered losses of around Rs 2.5 crore. So, we increased our focus on rigid box making as there is a good demand for these. We received many orders for corporate gifting boxes with magnetic effects during major festivals like Holi and Diwali, so we mainly focused on this special segment during the pandemic.”
“Although the idea of box making came to our mind before the pandemic, we had to stick to it during the pandemic due to our huge losses in commercial and book printing. We would have grown our box-making project to a larger scale much earlier if the pandemic hadn’t hit us. Now, I am planning to do something new and different in the rigid box segment. With the next generation coming into the family business soon, All Time Offset Printers is planning to build a separate plant for its packaging expansion.
Jajoo also plans to buy another multicolor offset press, which he says could be either a 4 or 5-color plus coater press – either brand new or perhaps a well-configured rebuilt press. While there are plans to invest in binding machinery on the commercial and book production side, the company is most hopeful for the future of its packaging expansion.
